The brain is ready and waiting for the next dose of cocaine. chemical groups that regulate gene expression are critically important to the understanding of addiction and depression.

 Within an hour of injecting mice with cocaine, over one hundred genes become activated.  If cocaine is used everyday, particular genes are actually inhibited from expressing proteins.  Prolonged use may render some genes over-activated for weeks and even months, whereas others become chronically inhibited.  The ingestion of this one chemical causes profound genetic alterations in the brain’s reward centers that may persist long after the drug is discontinued.  Many genes remain highly sensitized to the effects of cocaine for several weeks after the mouse was last injected.  The brain is ready and waiting for the next dose of cocaine.  The cocaine causes the epigentic chemicals to loosen the strands of DNA; priming them to be activated.

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